In 1993, my friend J.B. Shayne was visiting in my home, and as I was preparing a bit of lunch, he scanned my vast (at the time, anyway) CD collection — about 10 minutes into his investigative process, J.B. turned to me and said, “Do you realize that 80% of your music collection features female vocalists?” At the time, the thought had never occurred to me that J.B.’s statement might be true. Somehow, I’d just never realized it.
Over the coming months, then, as you might well expect, VanRamblings’ readers may reasonably project that the vast majority of music I’ll be writing about will feature women vocalists, from my country and Americana favourites Kasey Chambers, Allison Moorer, Iris DeMent, Kacey Musgraves, Lady Antebellum, Lori McKenna, Miranda Lambert, Nickel Creek, The Secret Sisters, Julia Stone and Lucinda Williams, to my fave urban contemporary artists like Chrisette Michelle, Teedra Moses, Nicki Flores, Rihanna, Mary J. Blige, Amel Larriuex, and Krys Ivory, to the following cross-genre artists …
Cat Power, Emiliana Torrini, Julien Baker, Laura Nyro, Lianne Le Havas, Rickie Lee Jones, Stina Nordenstam, Tracey Thorne, Gemma Hayes, Eva Cassidy, Feist, Imogen Heap, Robyn, Missy Higgins, Sharon van Etten, Laura Jansen, Lily Allen, Fiona Apple, Bic Runga, Beth Orton, Adaline, Coeur de Pirate, Emil Sande, Jem and Lykke Li, to female fronted groups like …
Apples in Stereo, Azure Ray, CocoRosie, The Roches, Rumer, and more.
The above artists only scratch the surface of my musical itch for discovery.
Sometimes, there are songs that I just keep returning to, music with harmonies featuring women’s voices, songs that pick me up, brighten my mood and give me hope. That’s the music I’m presenting today. The Rescues were formed in Los Angeles in 2008, a female fronted indie supergroup, featuring acclaimed singer / songwriter and multi instrumentalist Kyler England, composer, video director and artist Adrianne Gonzalez, who were joined by conductor and film score composer Gabriel Mann, and a rotating fourth vocalist, The Rescues together creating a free form amalgam of cross-genre musical styles ranging from acoustic, folk and Americana to progressive dance, electronica, hip-hop and rap.
Although Katy Perry did a cover of The Rescues’ Teenage Dream, Kyler England, Adrianne Gonzalez, Gabriel Mann and Rob Giles created the captivatingly gorgeous four-part harmonies that you’ll hear in their definitive version of Teenage Dream. Listen for yourself & enjoy …
Dating back to the late 1960s, through until today, I have often found employment as a music critic.
One of the great delights of my young life was to walk onto the property of Warner Bros. or Capitol Records, and be taken into the warehouse in behind the offices, leaving the premises with one hundred or more new albums, all ready to return to the home Cathy and I shared at Simon Fraser University.
From those days til today, my love for music, for discovering new music has known no bounds, as will remain the case through the end of my days.
Of course, I was very, very lucky, as were all members of the boom generation, to grow up in the era of The Beatles, and the rush of new music coming out of the UK, and down south out of Los Angeles. These were halcyon days of discovery, more often than not enhanced by the intake of cannabis (there is hardly any greater joy than listening to music stoned).
One of my early, great discoveries was Todd Rundgren, whose music career began in 1967 at the age of 19 with the Philadephia-based garage rock band, Nazz. Over the next four years, Nazz released three albums, all to little acclaim, prompting Rundgren to leave the group, move to New York, and educate himself in the fine arts of audio engineering and production.
Upon arriving in New York, Rundgren was signed by Ampex Records, where he began work producing for various rock groups of the day.
1972 proved to be a halcyon year for Todd Rundgren. After signing with Bearsville Records — a recording studio started in 1969 by legendary music impresario Albert Grossman, manager of Bob Dylan, The Band, and Janis Joplin — Rundgren’s musical career took off into the stratosphere.
A few years back, a friend asked me, “So, what kind of music do you like?” Today’s post is the first in a series of columns I’ll write on the music that has both changed and informed my life, my love of almost all musical genres also knowing almost no bounds. I love life. I love music.
Today’s VanRamblings’ music insight column tracks the work of Todd Rundgren, and his multi-platinum solo début, Something/Anything?
Early in 1972, soon after signing on with Albert Grossman, one Friday afternoon early in the year, Todd Rundgren was in the Bearsville Studio offices for a pre-production meeting for the upcoming album the studio intended to record. All went well at the meeting, and at the 5 o’ clock hour, as the cleaning crew arrived, Grossman prepared to close the studio for the weekend. Rundgren said, “I’ll have the cleaners let me out. I’m heading to the washroom.” Everyone bid their adieu, going home to their families.
But not Todd Rundgren. Instead, Rundgren hid out in a closet and slept for four hours, readying himself for the marathon production weekend ahead.
The cleaners left shortly before 9pm, when a sleepy Todd Rundgren emerged from his closet home. What occurred over the next fifty-seven and a half hours is part of rock and roll history.
From 9pm on that Friday night, until 6:30am Monday morning, Todd Rundgren wrote, produced, mixed, sang and played guitars, keyboards and all other instruments to produce the groundbreaking multi-platinum, multi-Grammy award winning hit machine, Something/Anything? — every voice Rundgren’s, every instrument played by the nascent songwriter-singer-producer, Rundgren over the weekend innovating on the recently acquired 8-track production studio equipment in ways previously unheard of and unimagined, writing a new chapter in the ongoing history of rock ‘n roll.
Twenty-five songs on a two disc album, recorded at a rate of under one fully produced song every three hours. When Bearsville Studio staff and executives arrived at their offices on Monday morning, they found Rundgren passed out, a master tape, track list and album cover art work on the console. Over the next three weeks, working with Rundgren, studio engineers fine-tuned the 23 songs, the double Something/Anything? album released to critical acclaim in April, out-selling every other album that year.
Something/Anything? spawned a half dozen chart topping hits, including I Saw the Light, and a remake of the Nazz near-hit Hello It’s Me, which shot to No. 5 in the week it was released. As a reminder: both songs featured Todd Rundgren producing, as well as on all vocals and instruments. It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference was the third smash hit off Something / Anything? to top the Billboard charts in the early autumn that year.
A dozen years later my children and I lived together at SFU with a woman, a younger doppelganger for my now ex-wife, dubbed by my friends, and referred to by my children as Cathy 2 — as my friends said, “the sane Cathy,” and so she was. One day when I was off teaching class, Cathy 2 put on the Rundgren album. When I arrived home to our two-bedroom apartment at Louis Riel House, Cathy 2 greeted me, smothering me in kisses, excitedly exclaiming, “Raymond, Raymond, I’ve spent the entire afternoon listening to Todd Rundgren’s Something/Anything? It’s gorgeous, it’s groundbreaking, I’ve never heard anything like it. I think I’m in love with Todd Rundgren!” And so she was, and so should we all be.
On a closing note, and to provide a bit more background on Todd Rundgren.
In 1972, Rundgren began a relationship with model Bebe Buell. During a break in their relationship, Buell had a brief relationship with Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, which resulted in an unplanned pregnancy. On July 1, 1977, Buell gave birth to Liv Tyler, the future model and actress. To protect the child from Tyler’s drug addiction, Buell claimed that Todd Rundgren was the biological father, and named the child Liv Rundgren, Todd Rundgren raising her as his daughter. At age fifteen, Liv learned that Steven Tyler was her biological father. Even so, Liv Tyler still calls Todd Rundgren her father, and still maintains a very close relationship with the now 70-year-old musician.
Yesterday at noon, VanRamblings had lunch with eastside activist Jak King.
A short ways into the conversation, Jak raised the topic of The Bodyguard, Britain’s biggest TV hit in years, attracting a record 17.1 million viewers for each episode of the crime series’ 6 episodes, now available on Netflix. Once Jak had read The Guardian’s five-star review of The Bodyguard, he set about to binge-watch the first five episodes of the hit BBC TV series.
Richard Madden as David Budd and Keeley Hawes as the home secretary, Julia Montague
The previous evening, meaning to take a brief break from our writing, we checked into the propulsive series, finding ourselves transfixed.
And that’s the way it is with Netflix, the must-have streaming service.
Eleven thousand first run films are available on Netflix, 20% of which are made in-house by Netflix (that figure will rise to 80% by 2020), with 7,500 TV series from across the globe available for your viewing pleasure 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No wonder Netflix won an unprecedented 23 Emmy’s at this year’s Academy of Television Arts & Sciences ceremony.
Netflix will début 57 new original shows and movies in November.
September and October of this year were two of the most impressive months Netflix subscribers have ever experienced when it comes to Netflix’s original content — including Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Maniac, just one of 52 different original shows and movies released by Netflix in September.
Débuting today on the Netflix streaming service, just in time for Hallowe’en, the well-reviewedThe Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, starring the heart of the AMC TV series Mad Men, Kiernan Shipka, as the titular teenage witch, the updated story a far cry from the days of Melissa Joan Hart’s frothy TV sitcom, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the new story something to scream about wrapped as it is in a moody, dark, funny, and stylishly atmospheric package that could be not be a better herald of fall and the Halloween season. Definitely a series to binge & watch with friends.
In addition to the horror genre (The Haunting of Hill House débuted earlier in the month), Netflix has also become the home of a genre of film that once was a Hollywood staple: romantic comedies, those mid-range cost films that generally found an audience, largely female, that Hollywood no longer seems to be interested in. Thank goodness, then, that Netflix has stepped up to the plate.
In August, the neglected genre was brought to new life with the streaming hits Set It Up, The Kissing Booth and To All The Boys I Loved Before, the latter (made in B.C.) an online sensation, featuring two winning new stars, Lana Condor & Noah Centineo, making legions of new fans not only for the young stars, whose careers have catapulted into the stratosphere, but for Netflix, which continues to gain a half million new subscribers each month.
Whatever your favourite film genre — action adventure, sci-fi / speculative fiction, foreign film, Oscar winners, British films, animation, family & children’s films, classic movies, crime thrillers, faith and spirituality, film noir, indie films, plus another 100 film genres — Netflix has you covered. Starting at only $8.99 a month that makes for not a bad film lovers deal.
37th Annual Vancouver International Film Festival
Thursday, September 27th thru Friday, October 12th
The 37th annual Vancouver International Film Festival is about to fall into place, taking over cinemas across Vancouver with 300 films representing 55 countries. Running from Sept. 27th thru Oct. 12th, VIFF is best approached like a multi-country overseas vacation: with pre-planning, and lots of it.
Here are some tips for your VIFF vacation. What movies to choose?
On viff.org, you’ll find films organized by programme (e.g. Panorama, Gateway, Dragons & Tigers, B.C. Spotlight), by country of origin, by genre, or by director. See what intrigues you! Also, you’ll want to check to see which films have a guest attending (noted on each film’s individual online page), which might mean an interesting Q&A. Note should be made that the most accurate and up-to-date information about guests is online only.
You can also peruse the printed, glossy and absolutely stunningly beautiful VIFF Guide, available at Chapters & Indigo and other bookstores as well as at almost all libraries across our region, or at any one of the nine venues where films will be screened, as well as at coffee shops all across town.
As always, a number of VIFF films will be returning to theatres for regular runs post-festival, although it can be both fun and enlightening to see these films during VIFF, particularly if a guest director is presenting the film, and also because most of these snob appeal, certain future Oscar nominee “Special Presentations” will screen at the luxurious 1800-seat Centre for the Performing Arts, on Homer Street across from the Vancouver Public Library.
Here are a few of the films with post-VIFF distribution planned for VIFF 2018, with tentative release dates …
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (October 19th), director Marielle Heller’s charming melancholic comedy about real-life writer-turned-criminal Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy, a lock guarantee for a Best Actress Oscar nomination), who forged some 400 letters by dead celebrities and pawned them off until the FBI caught up with her scheme;
Boy Erased (November 2nd). A richly humanistic, emotionally searing drama that sticks in the memory, Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea) stars as Jared, the son of a Baptist pastor in a small American town, who is outed to his parents (Nicole Kidman, a lock for a Best Supporting Actress nomination, and Russell Crowe) at age 19, who send him to a a gay conversion therapy programme;
A Private War (November 16th). The story of the late journalist Marie Colvin (Rosamund Pike), one of the most celebrated war correspondents of our time, an utterly fearless and rebellious spirit, driven to the frontlines of conflicts across the globe to give voice to the voiceless;
The Front Runner (November 21st). The Closing Gala film, tracking the rise and fall of Senator Gary Hart (Hugh Jackman, a lock for a Best Actor Oscar nomination), and the role tabloid journalism played in his downfall;
The Favourite (November 23rd). Entertainment Weekly’s Chris Nashawaty says about The Favourite, “a Satyricon-era Fellini-esque tragicomedy all hopped up with enough sex, deviance, hypocrisy, decadence, and spicy profanity to make your average Masterpiece Theatre patron reach into their PBS tote bag for some smelling salts.” And, oh yes, a lock guarantee for Best Picture, and a whack of actress nominations for Rachel Weisz, Olivia Colman, and Emma Stone.
Vox Lux (December 7th). Arriving on our shores directly from the Toronto Festival Festival, powered by a riveting performance of fiercely mannered bravado by Natalie Portman (a certain Best Actress nominee), Vox Lux paints a sharp, powerfully haunting and shellacked portrait of a ghost in the celebrity machine.
Destroyer (December 25th). A second VIFF 2018 film starring Nicole Kidman, director Karyn Kusama’s latest film follows the moral and existential odyssey of LAPD detective Erin Bell (Kidman, in one of the best ever performances). The film also features spectacular work from Canadian actress, Tatiana Maslany
Award-Winning Must-See Films
Over the past month, VanRamblings has written about each of the following films in our extensive coverage of VIFF 2018; for insight & information on what films to see, we recommend you peruse our previous posts on this year’s celebrated, must-see films for the VIFF 2018 films we list below.
The VIFF 2018 films we write about below constitute the 14 Cinema of the World films VanRamblings is recommending that those attending the 37th annual Vancouver International Film Festival give serious attention to when considering the purchase of tickets for this year’s film festivals, the films we believe are rock solid films that will both move you and change your world.
You may also want to check out Shane Scott Travis’ 25 Movies You Won’t Want to Miss at VIFF 2018 column on Taste of Cinema, as well as all of the coverage of VIFF 2018 in The Georgia Straight.
This year, the award-winning, must-see films arriving on our shores from places other than Hollywood, and set to unspool at VIFF include …
Screening at the 37th annual Vancouver International Film Festival this year: acclaimed Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest, Shoplifters, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May, a quietly devastating portrait of family and theft in contemporary Japan, resonant, compassionate, socially conscious filmmaking with a piercing intelligence that is pure Kore-eda, and a film that stole the hearts of the Cannes jury and even the most cynical of film journalists attending Cannes this year, a film made up of delicate brushstrokes: details, moments, looks and smiles, a heartbreaker that draws our empathy, and yet another charming, funny and affecting example of Kore-eda’s very special brand of tough-but-tender humanism.
Another Cannes favourite headed to VIFF 2018, Capernaum, Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki’s politically-charged fable about a child who launches a lawsuit against his parents, a staggering heart-in-mouth social-realist blockbuster teeming with sorrow, yet strewn with diamond-shards of beauty, wit and hope, at once quietly absorbing and fitfully shocking as we experience the sights, sounds and smells of the streets where a one-year-old child can wander around alone without anyone stopping to wonder why, and a film that while choosing dramatic power over narrative finesse makes a powerful statement on human misery and grotesque inequality while tackling its subject with intelligence, heart and furious compassion.
Another acclaimed film set to arrive at VIFF 2018, the much-looked-forward-to Cannes FIPRESCI Prize winner, South Korean director LEE Changdong’s Burning, starring Hollywood actor Steven Yuen (Okja, The Walking Dead). Here’s what Los Angeles Times film critic Justin Chang had to say about Burning …
At 2½ hours, Burning is a character study that morphs, with masterly patience, subtlety and nary a single wasted minute, into a teasing mystery and eventually a full-blown thriller. To reveal more would ruin the story’s slow-building pleasures, which are less about the haunting final destination than the subtle, razor-sharp microcurrents of class rage, family-inherited pain, everyday ennui and youthful despair that build in scene after scene, even when nothing more seems to be happening than a simple or not-so-simple conversation.
Defying expectations throughout, offering multiple, murky solutions to a set of mysteries wondrous in their complexity and inscrutability, Burning, with its jazzy score, gorgeously immaculate camerawork, shifting moods and carefully calibrated minimalism emerges as a genre-bending murder-mystery that torches genre clichés, in one of the most scorching and beautifully unforgettable films of the year. Yet another VIFF 2018 must-see.
The Panorama programme spans four series: Contemporary World Cinema, Spotlight on France, Vanguard, and new this year, Focus on Italy. Panorama films arrive on our shores to much critical acclaim and near rabid VIFF patron interest, so if you see a film you like, you should book your tickets for those films now, including: Jafar Panahi’s latest, 3 Faces (which is currently taking TIFF by storm); and Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro, the winner of Best Screenplay at Cannes.
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There are, of course, more than 100 films from across the globe in the Contemporary World Cinema series, including The Wild Pear Tree, the latest film from Master Nuri Bilge Ceylan (2014 Cannes Palme d’Or winner for Winter Sleep); the well-reviewed new film from German director Christian Petzold, Transit; Berlin Best Actor winner Anthony Bajon in The Prayer; and pushing the boundaries of cinema, Holiday, Swedish-born director Isabella Eklöf’s viciously auspicious low-temperature, high-impact début, a sun-splashed dark tableau about a frost-bitten summer vacation gone awry.
Each of the films named above are linked to the VIFF online page, allowing you to easily purchase tickets for one of the film’s upcoming screenings.
There are only nine films in the popular Spotlight on France series this year, each exceptional and each film exploring the rich cinematic culture that continues to flourish in France, a rare opportunity for habitués of the Lower Mainland to screen this year’s finest Gallic delights from l’Hexagone.
For instance, there’s Shéhérazade, proving that VIFF films are not only for the blue rinse and grey-haired crowd. Winner of the Prix Jean Vigo for France’s best first feature of the past year, Jean-Bernard Marlin’s slice-of-life drama about young love on the mean streets of Marseille harkens back to Italian neorealism in its use of non-professional actors and gritty locations. Kenza Fortas, as the tough teen prostitute Shéhérazade, is a real find. A native Marseillais, Marlin has crafted “an ultra-realist portrait of juvenile delinquency … and a surprising and engaging love story to boot.”
Eight films from Italy, long renowned for the world’s most groundbreaking cinema, comprises the first ever VIFF Focus on Italy series, including Daughter of Mine (pictured above), about which the VIFF 2018 programme guide records …
On sun-drenched Sardinia, ten-year-old Vittoria (Sara Casu), born of alcoholic party girl Angelica (Alba Rohrwacher) but raised as her own by sensible Tina (Valeria Golino), is drawn into her birth mother’s chaotic sphere, despite having no knowledge of the truth of her situation. Says Jessica Kiang in Variety “Laura Bispuri’s sunswept, emotive, and elemental sophomore narrative film… a noble rarity… unfolds with such a barefoot sense of place that you can almost feel the Sardinian sand between your unwashed toes.”
Oscar award-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s latest drama, Everybody Knows, opened Cannes this year to much acclaim, uniting lovers and longtime married couple Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz in a suspenseful kidnapping thriller set in Spain that will have you on the edge of your seat throughout, in the most gripping and propulsive popcorn-chomping genre film of the year, sociological cinema that explores the meaning of love, bitter resentment, societal divisions, class and the secrets that bind us together and pull us apart. Gosh, sounds just like our current Vancouver civic election — and probably just as compelling, too. Let’s face it, here’s a film not to be missed at VIFF 2018 — hey, it’s Asghar Farhadi … who misses an Asghar Farhadi film? Everybody Knows screens only once at VIFF, Friday, September 28th, 9pm at The Centre for the Performing Arts.
Cold War. A passionate love story between two people of different backgrounds and temperaments, who are fatally mismatched, set against the background of the Cold War in the 1950s in Poland, Berlin, Yugoslavia and Paris, Pawel Pawlikowski not only won Best Director at Cannes this year, Cold War has emerged as the odds-on favourite to pick up the Best Foreign Language Oscar this year (Pawlikowski’s film Ida won that very same award back in 2013). Says Time Out film critic Phil de Semlyen …
The Polish filmmaker has conjured a dazzling, painful, universal odyssey through the human heart and all its strange compulsions. It could be the most achingly romantic film you’ll see this year, or just a really painful reminder of the one that got away.
Accessible, humane, compassionate, epic, dreamlike, bittersweet and unbearably lovely, tell me, are you really planning on missing Cold War? No, I didn’t think so. Lucky us, Cold War screens twice at The Centre for the Performing Arts, on Tuesday, October 2nd at 6:30pm, and Wednesday, October 10th at 6:15pm. See ya there.
Here are two more VIFF 2018 films VanRamblings heartily recommends …
Director Jia Jia Zhang-ke’s Ash is the Purest White took Cannes by storm this year, a fierce, gripping, heartbreaking film that VanRamblings wholheartedly recommends.
And let us not forget the master of Asian cinema, Zhang Yimou (Ju Dou), who this year brings Shadow, as rousing and beautifully rendered a film as you’ll see at VIFF this year, and a stunning epic re-imagining of the Wuxia third century Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history.
The easiest way to purchase tickets is to go online to viff.org. Just put the name of the film you’re interested in into the search engine (top right), and click on Buy when you reach the film’s online webpage — from there it’s easy, allowing you to print your tickets at home.
Or, you can call the Festival Infoline at 604-683-3456 from noon til 6 p.m. daily through October 12th. (Online is quicker.) Note that there is a service charge for online and phone orders: $1 per single ticket, up to $4 per order. Note. Required by the provincial government (because VIFF films screen unrated) you’ll need to purchase a one-time $2 VIFF membership.
Tickets can be purchased at the venues during operating hours. As of September 28th, all festival venues — The Vancity Theatre on Seymour just north of Davie Street; The Centre for Performing Arts, on Homer Street directly across from the Vancouver Public Library; The Cinematheque on Howe Street just north of Davie; SFU Goldcorp Theatre, at Abbott and Hastings; Cineplex International Village, at Pender and Abbott; and The Playhouse Theatre, across from the old Post Office — will have a box office open daily, one hour before the day’s first screening. What about ticket packages or passes?
A Student or Senior 5-ticket pack goes for $60.
If you’re planning to go to a few films, for regular filmgoers the Festival Six-Pack is a good deal: six tickets for $85, compared to individual ticket prices of $13 – $17.
The best deal? A $160 Weekday Matineé pass, which will allow you to see all of the films you can get to between 10am and 5:55pm Monday to Friday, which if you play your cards right oughta allow you to see up to 75 films, and near double that if you choose to attend VIFF programmer Sandy Gow’s always spectacular & moving International Shorts film programmes.
The regular Senior and Student Pass goes for $330, while the full Festival Patron Pass is available for $420. What about all those lines outside the theatres?
Each VIFF screening will have three separate queues: a pass-holder line (for those with passes hanging around their necks; you know who you are), a ticket-holders line (for those with tickets in hand) and a rush line. Standby tickets, for screenings that are sold out, go on sale 10 minutes before showtime, at full price (cash preferred).
No matter which line you’re in, arriving at least 30 minutes early (arriving an hour early is better) is a good idea, particularly if you’re picky about where you sit. (Seating is not guaranteed, even if you have a ticket or a pass, if you arrive less than 20 minutes before showtime.) What about food and drink?
Though most VIFF venues serve the usual popcorn / candy / soft-drink fare, some have a few extras (there’s beer and wine at The Rio, and wine at the Vancity, for example). Not to worry, there are a wealth of restaurants just steps from the door from most venues. Outside food and drink is officially not allowed in the theatres, but VIFF-goers have been known to get away with it; be discreet, considerate and tidy. What about bus routes and parking?
Translink / Coast Mountain buses are the best way to get downtown, where most of the venues are located. Once downtown, most of the venues are within walking distance of one another. Or, if you’re planning on seeing a film at The Rio, Skytrain will whisk you there in no time flat. There’s parking at Cineplex International Village, but you’re going to want to check in with Festival staff (they’ll be wearing bright yellow VIFF t-shirts) to register your vehicle. What about crowds?
There will be crowds, particularly at the better-known films; not a lot you can do about that. Chances are that you’ll meet some thoughtful person or people in line; it happens often. Weekday screenings generally have shorter lines, particularly for the less well-known films.
All and all, quite simply, there is just no better time that can be had at any time of the year than through attending Vancouver’s international film festival, the most humanizing, eye-opening film event of the year, providing both a sympathetic & empathetic window on our too often troubled world.
As VanRamblings has written previously, while VIFF explores the Cinema of Despair, it also presents the festival-goer with the Cinema of Hope.
Over the course of the Vancouver International Film Festival’s 16 days, your world will be rocked — and, by festival’s end, you’ll emerge a changed, and a better person for the experience. Where else could that happen, at what other première arts event during the course of the year could that occur than at the Vancouver International Film Festival, where you’ll meet new friends, engage in a collective and humanizing endeavour that will provide insight into how lives are lived in every country and every region across our globe, and help you to realize and remember, as well, that we’re all in this together, we all seek love and connection, we all cherish family, and in the best of all possible worlds, we all seek understanding, and if we are very, very lucky, by film festival’s end, together we will have successfully fought the pervasive sense of anomie that has had us in its grip arising from the rise of the politics of fear and division currently extant in our world and even in our own country.
Through attendance at our 37th annual Vancouver International Film Festival’s, the possibility exists that we may achieve the realization of the spirit of collective transcendence, and hope for a better future for all of us through activism — which by film festival’s end means you should get out to vote for the candidates who mean to bring about change for the better.
Happy VIFF’ing, and happy voting in our current municipal election. See you at the movies, and at the election polls! Change for the better is near!
